Effective immediately, NetObjects has reduced the estimated U.S. street price of NetObjects Fusion 2.0 from $495 to $295 and is offering a limited time competitive upgrade of $195. In addition, the company disclosed that it is working on a new site team-based solution that streamlines the process of people working together to create compelling Web sites. This news follows the prior announcement of NetObjects Fusion Personal Edition (PE), a slimmed-down product aimed at first-time site builders that is distributed exclusively through partners.

Taken together, the news underscores NetObjects' aggressive strategy to build dominant market share in the Web authoring software market by providing a family of category-creating products that scales to accommodate site builders' evolving needs. Since September 1996, over 250,000 people have used NetObjects Fusion to build Web sites. Customers include major corporations such as Greyhound, Motorola and Peoplesoft; businesses such as Total Entertainment Network and Omni Healthcare; and design firms such as SourceW (a division of Westinghouse) and Chaos 2 0rder.

"At NetObjects, we believe in changing the rules, not merely following them," said Samir Arora, chairman and CEO of NetObjects. "NetObjects Fusion debuted as the only site-oriented product in a market crowded with page-based offerings and has become the de facto standard for business Web site building. Today, we are making it easier for more site builders to benefit from the power of NetObjects Fusion, while protecting their investment with a seamless upgrade path within a family of products. In addition, we are leveraging the learning from 24 Hours in Cyberspace to develop a solution that brings a unique approach to the still-unsolved problems of team-based authoring and content contribution."

Pricing
All registered users of NetObjects Fusion will benefit from the new estimated street price of $295. Users who registered the product either on or prior to July 11, 1997 will receive a $200 rebate certificate in the mail that is good for the purchase of any existing or upcoming NetObjects products and services. End users who bought the product between July 12, 1997 and August 10, 1997 are eligible for a refund of up to $200. In addition, NetObjects is offering a limited time competitive upgrade of $195 (effective after a $100 mail-in rebate) that expires on October 31, 1997 for users of competitive products, including Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe PageMill and SoftQuad HotMetal Pro. For additional information on eligibility criteria, rules and procedures on the program and mechanisms for receiving the rebate, please visit our Web site at www.netobjects.com and then call 1-888-449-6400.

"Dropping the price for NetObjects Fusion is the right thing to do right now," said Joan-Carol Brigham, research manager, International Data Corporation. "It not only opens the market to more people for site-oriented Web authoring, it also paves the way for NetObjects to expand its product line -- a strategy which should position NetObjects well for the future."

Solving the Site Team Authoring Problem
NetObjects is expanding its product family beyond NetObjects Fusion 2.0 and NetObjects Fusion Personal Edition with plans for a new site team authoring solution. The company today announced the NetObjects Site Team Open Architecture, the foundation of a planned product solution that will allow Web teams to seamlessly work together to design, build and update dynamic Web sites and then deploy them on any standard Web server, database server and browser platforms.

NetObjects' Site Team solution is based on the following fundamental market trends:

• As Web sites continue to grow in size and sophistication, the single web author playing multiple roles is being replaced by specialists in a Web team who play specific roles
• Site builders are increasingly building sites optimized for the dominant platform standards of HTML and Java, with initial experimentation with DHTML
• The number of content contributors greatly outnumber members of core Web teams
• Current solutions are not being adopted by the market because they are either based on a limited file-sharing metaphor that lacks scalability or on a complex Unix database approach that lacks the ease-of-use required by Web teams.

As a result, site building has become an even more complex activity with Web teams struggling to find ways of working together to meet the demands to continually update sites, with limited resources and severe time constraints.

NetObjects' solution will draw from the company's experience as a sponsor of 24 Hours in Cyberspace, a multi-page, collaborative site built by over 250 authors over a 24 hour period in February 1996. The NetObjects site team solution will be based on the company's pioneering 'site-wide' approach, its unique understanding of the process of Web site building, its SOLO (Structure of Linked Objects) architecture and comittment to supporting all industry-standard platforms.

NetObjects expects to deliver its Site Team solution by the end of calendar year 1997. Details on product, pricing and availability will be provided at that time.

About NetObjects
NetObjects, Inc. is a privately-held company that is funded by IBM, Perseus LLC, AT&T Ventures, Norwest Venture Capital, Venrock Associates, Rae Technology LLC and private investors. NetObjects' partners include Apple Computer ( AAPL), AT&T (NYSE: T), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Netscape (NASDAQ: NSCP), Sun Microsystems' Javasoft (NASDAQ: SUNW) and UUNET (NASDAQ: WCOM).

NetObjects Fusion is the first smart Web site building application that integrates automated site building, professional quality design and publishing, thereby lowering the cost, time and tedium of building high-quality Web sites. NetObjects Fusion has won several awards including CNET's 1997 Internet Excellence Award for Best Web Design Product and PC Magazine's Editors Choice award. More information about NetObjects can be found at www.netobjects.com.